Date:Â 1909
Size: Â 37Â x 28Â inches
Artist: Klinger, Julius
Julius Klinger was an Austrian artist of exceptional talent. His designs are irreverent, charming, and in some cases, not a little bit naughty. We love them all, but this one is a personal favorite - I guess I have a thing for men in chicken costumes! Costume balls and parties were very popular in Germany and Austria in the Art Deco period, as were costume shops. This poster, printed by Hollerbaum und Schmidt, one of Berlin's premier print houses, is linen-backed and in very good condition.
This poster has just been returned from the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami where it was on display for their eponymous exhibition, Julius Klinger: Posters for a Modern Age.Â
In Klinger's 1923 presentation of his studio and its designs, he wrote:
"The moving spirit of Vienna poster-designers whose work is reproduced in this production, is Julius Klinger, at once the oldest and best known among them. For more than a quarter of a century he has devoted himself to this special line of art; he was twenty when he began and is now forty-eight. From the first, he gave up all his time and thought to his work, for he is a poster-designer body and soul. His entire cosmos is bound up with it.
America is the land of his heart's desire. But for him, America is but a theoretical conception for he has never had the good luck to see it for himself and experience its life. It may be that just for this reason his longings are the more intense. America as he conceives it means spacious style, World Power and an eye for the future. Klinger's posters bear relation to life as it really is. He knows that in the poster, this intellectual artifice, he can express the most trivial things of everyday life. This belief has enabled him to gather around him a number of congenial spirits and his Americanized ideas in weary, stale Europe are finding more and more supporters. Klinger is not unknown in America. His posters have been frequently reproduced there and have gained much appreciation from  connoisseurs for the purity of their lines."